The UK's Authoritarian Hypocrisies
Yesterday afternoon the British police charged Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh from the Irish language hip-hop group Kneecap with a terrorism offence.
His case has every chance of turning into a spectacular example of political and cultural hypocrisy. Today’s left and right want freedom for their supporters to incite violence but not for their political opponents.
Neither side is willing to accept that free societies should set the bar for state censorship high if they wish to remain free. Neither side is even willing to admit the existence of their own double standards.
We, however, can talk frankly. Let’s start with the left and those brave Kneecap boys.
Liam Barker, a now elderly victim of the IRA, Liam Barker tried to persuade people to shun the band by telling the BBC how the provos kneecapped him. A gang of masked men beat him unconscious with hammers for joyriding when he was 15. They attempted to blow his knees off. But the gun jammed. So, they dropped paving slabs on his legs instead.
Kneecap are “making a living out of other people's misery,” he said.
Continue at Writing From London.
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